{"id":4443,"date":"2022-08-16T22:00:05","date_gmt":"2022-08-16T16:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bnc24.com\/en\/?p=4443"},"modified":"2022-08-16T22:00:05","modified_gmt":"2022-08-16T16:00:05","slug":"legal-experts-applaud-amber-heards-choice-of-new-lawyers-for-johnny-depp-verdict-appeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bnc24.com\/en\/photonews\/2022\/08\/16\/news\/4443\/","title":{"rendered":"Legal experts applaud Amber Heard\u2019s choice of new lawyers for Johnny Depp verdict appeal"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Amber Heard has hired new lawyers as she appeals the $10 million verdict awarded to Johnny Depp in their defamation battle.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

WASHINGTON, Broadcasting News Corporation : Amber Heard has hired new lawyers as she appeals the $10 million verdict awarded to Johnny Depp in their defamation battle \u2014 a move experts said could be advantageous for the \u201cAquaman\u201d actress. Heard, 36, has brought on David Axelrod and Jay Ward Brown, of national law firm Ballard Spahr, who successfully represented the New York Times against former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin\u2019s libel lawsuit. They\u2019ll help Heard as she fights to overturn the largely unfavorable verdict against her handed down by a jury following the ex-couple\u2019s bombshell trial in Fairfax, Virginia. Virginia lawyer Elaine Bredehoft \u2014 who repped Heard at trial \u2014 will be leaving the team, according to a spokesperson for the actress. \u201cA different court warrants different representation, particularly as so much new evidence is now coming to light,\u201d the rep said.
\nTexas civil lawyer Katherine Lizardo \u2014 who followed the trial closely \u2014 said she expected the change in the legal team and noted it would benefit Heard. \u201cThis is a good move for her because it would give her a different point of view legally from trial counsel,\u201d Lizardo told The Post. Appeal lawyers are a \u201cdifferent breed\u201d of attorneys who are experts in the \u201cnuanced and specialty\u201d field of law, Lizardo explained. \u201cIf Amber Heard did not hire an attorney that was familiar with the appellate system then she would lose,\u201d she said. Lizardo also noted that it takes a certain demeanor to argue an appellate case \u2014 which in Virginia only allows for each side to speak for 15 minutes before a three-judge panel. \u201cElaine Bredehoft\u2019s style at trial and her time management issues wouldn\u2019t work for appeal,\u201d Lizardo said. \u201cWe saw when Elaine would ramble on or argue unrelated matters and that would be very detrimental if she argued similarly in front of the court of appeal judges.\u201d New York civil lawyer William Newman told The Post that Axelrod and Brown\u2019s maneuvers in Palin\u2019s case against the Times signal the type of strategy the legal team will use in Heard\u2019s appeal. The lawyers had focused on trying to prove that statements made about the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee in a Times piece weren\u2019t made with actual malice \u2014 which is a higher legal standard applied to cases involving public figures. \u201cBy selecting a lawyer that famously made that argument in the Sarah Palin case \u2014 that tells me that [actual malice] is going to be something that they are going to likely focus on in this appeal,\u201d Newman said. Still, Newman said it\u2019s smart that Heard is still hanging onto one of her Virginia lawyers from trial, Benjamin Rottenborn.
\n\u201cI think it\u2019s a good choice,\u201d Newman said of hiring Axelrod and Brown. \u201cBallard Spahr is a very well regarded firm. She is in good hands.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s still very good to have local Virginia lawyers working on it too,\u201d Newman added. Former California appeals court judge and current criminal defense attorney Halim Dhanidina told The Post that hiring new lawyers for an appeal is routine and has many upsides, including gaining the expertise of an appellate lawyer and getting a fresh set of eyes on the case. A trial lawyer \u201cis almost too close to the issues.\u201d Dhanidina said. \u201cWhereas an appellate specialist might be able to look at what happened in the lower court record and have perhaps a different perspective or a different strategy of how they might be successful on appeal.\u201d \u201cWhat an attorney might want to do at the appellate level is perhaps second guess some of the strategies or actions taken by the trial attorney and the attorney who handled the trial would obviously not be in a position to be critical or to second guess their own actions,\u201d the former judge noted. The 59-year-old \u201cPirates of the Caribbean\u201d actor won a $10.35 million verdict in June with a jury siding with his claims that Heard defamed him in a 2018 Washington Post op-ed piece on being a victim of domestic violence. While she didn\u2019t specifically name Depp in the essay, his side argued at trial that it clearly referred to her allegations that he abused her around their 2016 divorce. The jury awarded Heard $2 million in her counterclaims that Depp defamed her when his lawyer Adam Waldman called her claims a hoax. Bredehoft didn\u2019t return a request for comment Monday. News collected from NEW YORK POST.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON, Broadcasting News Corporation : Amber Heard has hired new lawyers as she appeals the $10 million verdict awarded to Johnny Depp in their defamation battle \u2014 a move experts said could be advantageous for the \u201cAquaman\u201d actress. Heard, 36, has brought on David Axelrod and Jay Ward Brown, of national law firm Ballard Spahr, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4444,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-photonews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bnc24.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bnc24.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bnc24.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bnc24.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bnc24.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4443"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bnc24.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4445,"href":"https:\/\/www.bnc24.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4443\/revisions\/4445"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bnc24.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bnc24.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bnc24.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bnc24.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}